In the food industry, during production of a cooked or flash fried meat or fish product, pieces of raw meat (such as poultry) or raw fish are passed along a production line. In some cases, the raw meat or fish may be coated, for example with batter and/or breadcrumbs. The production line typically comprises conveyor belts that transport the raw meat or fish through different processing zones. The pieces of raw meat or fish are delivered across the width of the conveyor belt, typically by manual effort or vibrating spreader. Typically, the raw meat or fish ultimately is frozen or is delivered to a cooker or fryer. In this regard, this freezing or heating phase will “set” the product in the shape in which it is presented. As such, for product aesthetics, it is desirable that the pieces of raw meat or fish should be delivered in an aligned configuration. Furthermore, where the raw meat or fish is to be coated, it is important that the entire surface of the meat or fish is coated and, as such, that the meat or fish should be presented for coating in an “unravelled” and substantially flat configuration.
In view of the above, considering the pieces of raw meat or fish to generally be longer than they are wide, the pieces should lay on the conveyor belt with their “long” side substantially parallel to the direction of travel. Further, the pieces should lie substantially flat on the conveyor belt.
This operation has typically been carried out manually, with a team of people working alongside the conveyor to place the products in the correct alignment as they pass by. The work is boring and repetitive and, being labour-intensive, costly.
More recently, this manual alignment has been combined with vibrating conveyor belts. Examples of vibrating conveyor belts are the Iso-Flo® Batter/Breader Feed Systems and the Iso-Flo® Alignment Vibratory Conveyor, both made by Key Technology Inc, and the Product Orientators made by FMC Technologies Inc. In practice, generally, these vibrating conveyor belts are used in combination with manual alignment.
It has been found that these vibrating conveyor belts are particularly aggressive. As such, when transporting a coated material for example, the vibrating conveyor belt can cause the coating to come away from the material or to flatten on the material. This has clear disadvantages relating to the quality of the finished product.
In addition, it has been found that vibrating conveyor belts are difficult to integrate into an existing production line. This is because eventually the material must be transferred from the vibrating conveyor belt back onto a non-vibrating conveyor belt. It has been found that the material has a tendency to bunch up again at the point of transfer, thus counteracting the earlier aligning of the material.
To some extent, the industry has accepted the above problems. Further, any efforts to improve this have been concentrated on improving previously known vibrating conveyor belts by trying to optimize the frequency and intensity of vibration.
There have been proposals for apparatus to turn over and re-orient fish fillets. In DE-A-1454072, a machine is disclosed in which a fillet is carried by an upper conveyor and then passed downwards on to another conveyor which reverses its direction of movement to receive the fillet before resuming its normal motion to deliver the fillet in the same direction as the upper conveyor. A modified version of this is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,958,409. It comprises three conveyors, all running in the same direction, the upper conveyor dropping the fillet towards the start of an intermediate conveyor, which then delivers the fillet on to a third conveyor immediately beneath the intermediate conveyor. There is therefore still only one drop, with no reversal of direction to assist in aligning the fillet, and consistent alignment is unlikely to be achieved.
In view of the above, although it generally is understood that there is a problem in the food industry in aligning materials such as raw meat or fish on a production line, this substantially has been accepted as a problem that could not be substantially reduced or overcome.
In this regard, the present inventors unexpectedly have found a completely new approach for solving the above problem.